Great Falls, Montana, United States
I love the art of art of the western frontier, and Charles
M. Russell is (along with Frederic Remington) my favorite artist of the genre. Russell was mostly focused on Montana, his
home state, and specifically the area around Great Falls north toward the
Canadian border and Glacier National Park, an iconic landscape of plains, buttes,
mountains, cowboys, and Indians. He’s considered the cowboy artist par
excellence but depicted Indians nearly as frequently in his work, and generally
in a more nuanced and sympathetic light than his contemporary Remington.
The Russell Museum complex takes up an entire city block in
a residential neighborhood in Great Falls and includes the family home and his
log cabin studio as well as the large modern museum that holds by far the
largest single collection of his works – sculptures and prints as well as
paintings. It is huge for a museum dedicated to one artist, but now includes
displays by other Western artists from his era through the present.
I actually visited the Russell Museum twice before. Once was
on my 2001 trip through Montana when I was highly impressed with what I saw but
not yet that well versed in American and Western art, and then again in the winter
of 2012 on my way back from Flathead Lake. The second time, though, most of it was closed
for renovation/expansion with few of his original works on display. The museum
has apparently undergone a significant expansion since because I don’t remember
it being so large. It’s is now two floors with more than 15 large galleries. Now
the entire lower floor and newer galleries are dedicated to other artists of
the American West, to the plains bison, and to the American Indian cultures of
the Plains and Northwest.
This year held a special treat for the summer season. A special
exhibition of Russell’s paintings from other collections that were exhibited or
sold at a show of his work at the Calgary Stampede in 1919 to celebrate end of
WWI for the 100th anniversary of the event. A great selection of some of his best-known
paintings were on display, many of which I’ve seen elsewhere like in Eiteljorg,
Amon Carter, Joslyn, and Gilcrease museums, to name but a few. It was great to see so much Charles M.
Russell all in one place.
2025-05-22